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Social Movement Studies: Journal of

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Reform, Rupture or Re-Imagination:

Understanding the Purpose of an
Occupation
Guy Aitchison

School of Public Policy, University College London, London, UK

Version of record first published: 22 Nov 2011.

To cite this article: Guy Aitchison (2011): Reform, Rupture or Re-Imagination: Understanding the
Purpose of an Occupation, Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest,
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Social Movement Studies,

Vol. 10, No. 4, 431439, November 2011

PROFILE

Reform, Rupture or Re-Imagination:

Understanding the Purpose of an Occupation
GUY AITCHISON

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School of Public Policy, University College London, London, UK

ABSTRACT Despite a resurgence in the use of occupations as a political tactic in the UK, there is
little agreement on how they contribute to the realisation of a movements goals. Drawing on the
authors experience of occupations at University College London (UCL), this profile argues for an
understanding of occupation according to a threefold model of transformational social change:
symbiotic, ruptural and interstitial. As the occupations progressed, UCL activists understanding of
the collective action they had undertaken was expanded and transformed, with increasing emphasis
placed on the ruptural and interstitial visions. These both reflected and reinforced a broader process
of politicisation and radicalisation amongst the student body. The profile concludes by suggesting
that no conception of the purpose of an occupation should be regarded as universally valid since an
accommodation between competing strategic visions is both required and necessary.
KEY WORDS : Protest, occupation, student activism, direct action

Over the course of the 2010 2011 academic year, students and their supporters at
University College London (UCL) carried out three occupations in protest at cuts to higher
education and the governments wider austerity measures. The first of these, which took
place in the Jeremy Bentham Room (JBR) between 24 November and 10 December, was
one of the most prominent of over 50 school and university occupations taking place at
that time, attracting significant media attention and serving as a focal point for the national
campaign of resistance to the governments legislation on tuition fees. In February, a
second occupation took place in another conference room, the Old Refectory. This
occupation lasted several days and fed into the occupation of an entire building in
Bloomsbury owned by another London university, Royal Holloway. It served as a radical
organising spacethe Anti-Cuts Spacebefore being raided by bailiffs. A third
occupation at UCL in support of a lecturers strike took place between 22 and 24 March in
the university registry.
It is striking how, during the winter of 2010, the act of occupation as a political tactic
enjoyed a huge resurgence amongst the student population of the UK at a time when the
majority had only a vague idea of what an occupation is and what it was expected to
achieve. The over-arching goal of stopping the governments legislation on tuition fees
going through parliament was, presumably, shared by all who took part in the first
Correspondence Address: Guy Aitchison, School of Public Policy, The Rubin Building, 29/30 Tavistock Square,
London WC1H 9QU, UK. Email: g.aitchison-cornish@ucl.ac.uk
1474-2837 Print/1474-2829 Online/11/040431-9 q 2011 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2011.614114

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G. Aitchison

occupation, along with the idea that occupying ones university was a worthwhile tactic in
pursuit of that goal. Yet when it comes to the more specific question of what the purpose of
an occupation isthat is, how exactly it will contribute to the realisation of ones political
aimsthere was far less clarity. There is, of course, no single correct answer to the
question of what the purpose of an occupation is but instead a number of alternative
conceptions of how the occupied space should be configured, how the occupiers should set
about achieving their political goals and what their relationship with authorityin the
form of university management, elected representatives and the policeshould be.
Proceeding through an analysis of the three occupations at UCL, and drawing on
examples from other student occupations, this profile will show how activists conceptions
of the purpose of an occupation vary according to an evolving set of political commitments
grounded in distinctive visions of transformational social change. Occasionally, these
competing conceptions were a source of conflict amongst activists at UCL, as in other
occupations, but by far the most significant fact to note is the way in which activists
understanding of what an occupation is was radically expanded and transformed as part of
a broader process of politicisation and radicalisation. This transformation, I argue, both
reflected and reinforced a more general shift amongst the occupiers, from a broadly centreleft, social democratic politics to a much more radical anti-capitalist politics. In
conclusion, I suggest that no single conception of the role and purpose of an occupation
should be viewed as universally valid. The experience of occupation will nearly always
involve careful negotiation, amongst activists of different political views and
backgrounds, of a number of different and occasionally conflicting conceptions of the
utility of the collective action they have undertaken, each grounded in shifting and
overlapping strategies for social change, none of which can command unanimity.
Successinsofar as it can be judgedwill often involve a messy combination of different
elements from each of these conceptions. My argument is informed by my own experience
taking part in these occupations as an activist and PhD student at UCL; I am grateful for
comments and feedback from fellow UCL students and occupiers, Sam Halvorsen and
Jessica Riches.
Three Models of Transformational Social Change
The most common framework for thinking about strategies for transformational social
change is the traditional opposition of reform and revolution, but a far more useful
approach is that taken by Erik Olin Wright in Envisioning Real Utopias which sets out a
sophisticated tripartite model based on symbiotic, ruptural and interstitial visions
(Verso 2010). These three strategies differ both in terms of their visions of the trajectory
of systemic transformation and in their understanding of the nature of the strategies needed
to move along that trajectory (Wright, p. 303). They each correspond to different political
traditions within egalitarian social movements; emphasise the role of different actors in
emancipatory resistance and embody different strategic logics with respect to capitalism
and the state. The central distinction Wright makes is between ruptural strategies and
trajectories of metamorphosis. Ruptural strategies involve direct confrontation and
political struggle with the aim of creating new institutions of social empowerment through
a sharp break with existing institutions and social structures. Activists working within the
orthodox tradition of revolutionary Marxism, in parties such as the Socialist Workers Party
and the Socialist Party, are the paradigmatic examples of such an approach. The prospect

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433

of a revolutionary rupture may seem romantic and far-fetched in normal circumstances,

but it is important for our purposes that certain aspects of the strategysuch as the
emphasis on sharp confrontation with dominant classes and the stateneed not be
restricted to totalizing ruptures in entire social systems (p. 309).
There are, meanwhile, two alternative visions of change through metamorphosis.
Interstitial metamorphosisperhaps the least well known of the threeseeks to build new
forms of social empowerment in the niches and margins of capitalist society (p. 323). The
core idea, elaborated by writers in the anarchist tradition, is to create autonomous
institutions, which embody the democratic and egalitarian goals activists aspire to. Central
to this strategy is the insight that capitalism and the state are not things external to society
that can be confronted and defeated but a set of social relationships, which negate
alternative forms of human association through their own successful reproduction. A free
society will not exist until non-coercive forms of human interaction out-compete and
displace coercive forms. This cannot wait until a singular, all transformative moment of
ruptural change but requires open-minded experimentation and practical testing out of new
methods of free association at every opportunity. Although they may not see what they are
doing in these terms, the work of many community activists involved in projects such as
community land trusts and consumer co-operatives, is consistent with such a strategy.
Interstitial visions are commonly found in the work of autonomist thinkers linked to
the alter-globalisation movement (Hardt & Negri, 2001; Holloway, 2005). The ideals and
motivations behind such visions, however, go back at least as far as the Industrial Workers
of the World, the syndicalist union established at the turn of the 20th century, which
propagates a vision of socialism based upon principles of federalism, on free combination
from below upward; and, indeed, to past experiments in new-world construction, such as
the Italian autonomists, Paris Communards and English Diggers.
The third and final strategy which emancipatory social movements may choose to
pursue, according to Wrights framework, is symbiotic metamorphosis. This involves
extending and deepening institutional forms of popular social empowerment in a manner
that is consistent with the interests of dominant classes and elites (p. 305). Historically, the
most important example is the class compromise embodied in the relatively stable postWW2 Keynesian settlement, which encompasses a welfare state and a system of collective
bargaining between capital and labour. In modern capitalist countries it typically involves
social democratic parties (such as the British Labour Party) with links to trade unions,
working through the institutions of parliamentary democracy to create electoral coalitions
across social classes that compete for political power.
In practice, of course, the visions of social movement activists are far less clear cut and
there is a great deal of cross-over between them. The salient point to note is that nearly
every strategy for social transformation will embody one, two or three of these methods
and ideals to a greater or lesser extent.
Symbiotic Visions of Occupation
The first UCL occupation was part of a much wider eruption of student activism in
response to huge cuts by the Conservative Liberal Democrat government to higher
education, tied to a threefold increase in tuition fees, and the abolition of the Educational
Maintenance Allowance (a grant of up to 30pw for 16 19 year old students from lowincome households). The decision by UCL activists to take some form of direct action was

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G. Aitchison

taken at a lively meeting of around 150 students and education workers that followed the
storming by students of the Conservative Party headquarters at 30 Millbank, near the
Houses of Parliament, on 10 November 2010. A small group of experienced activists was
formed to make preparations and a rally was called in the UCL quad for 24 November, the
day of the first national walk out of university and school students called by the National
Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, the Educational Activist Network and the London
Student Assembly, protest groups on the radical wing of the student movement. Following
the rally, a group of around 200 marched into the JBR, a large conference space near the
main entrance to UCL used for receptions and corporate events, and by student societies.
An immediate meeting was called and a collective decision taken to occupy it as part of the
campaign against tuition fees and cuts to higher education. Many of those present,
including myself, had never participated in an occupation before with the various Climate
Camp protests the only comparable experience. For the overwhelming majority, this was
their first experience of any sustained political engagement, let alone direct action.
There was a paradoxical logic at work in this initial act of occupation. It reflected both a
radical disenchantment with parliament and political parties and a residual hope that these
could be influenced towards progressive ends by convincing a sufficient number of MPs to
vote against the governments measures. The higher education bill provided a focal point
for opposition and defined the lifecycle of the occupations. At the same time, the
occupation movement was seen by many as the most vivid manifestation of an entire
generations withdrawal from the political system. Activists at UCL initially navigated
this tension by presenting the use of direct action tactics as a last resort following the
failure of the ordinary political process. This made sense within the context of a popular
discourse, played out repeatedly in the mainstream media, which emphasised the
betrayal of Deputy Prime minister Nick Clegg and his party, the Liberal Democrats, who
had sold out students in abandoning their election pledge to abolish tuition fees in
exchange for power. As the initial statement drawn up consensually by UCL occupiers
put it:
We stand against fees and savage cuts to higher education and government attempts
to force society to pay for a crisis it didnt cause. Promises have been broken, the
political process has failed and we have been left with no other option.
Implicit in this first statement is the idea that direct action tactics denote a state of
exception, to be resorted to when political processeswhich, we are to presume,
ordinarily function in a satisfactory mannerhave failed. The statement was
accompanied by a list of demands addressed to UCL management. The occupation
demanded that UCL:
. Issue a statement condemning all cuts to higher education and the rise in tuition
fees.
. Implement a complete open books policy with regard to existing budget
constraints.
. Ensure no redundancies for teaching, research or support staff.
. Reverse its outsourcing policy by bringing staff back in-house.
. Implement the full living wage package for all cleaning, catering and security
staff with no cuts to hours and jobs.

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. Ensure no victimisation or repercussions for anyone participating in the

occupation.
. Allow free access in and out of the occupation.
As Genevieve Dawson points out regarding the occupation at Oxford University, unlike a
regular protest, an occupation compels a debate with the university authorities (Hancox
2011). A great deal of care was taken in writing these demands in the first few hours in the
JBR to ensure that they provided a clear and realisable set of goals with which to negotiate.
A working group was set up to oversee negotiations with management, and representatives
chosen at group meetings to negotiate with the universitys Vice Provost and Head of
Security on the occupations behalf.
Demands are, by their nature, always demands to some higher authority, usually
involving an appeal to that authority to alter the existing state of affairs within the terms of
the dominant system. As the occupation progressed and activists political horizons
along with their understanding of what it means to reclaim and reconfigure a space
changed, the importance attached to the demands diminished. The second (February)
occupation was undertaken primarily as a means to secure an organising space and
reinvigorate activism on campus ahead of the Trades Union Congress demonstration on
26 March. This second occupation included almost the entire first set of demands, but this
time accompanied by more utopian demands that management would almost certainly
never agree to (such as the thoroughgoing democratisation of all university structures).
The third (March) occupation, in solidarity with striking lecturers, barely discussed
political demands.

Ruptural Visions of Occupation

The care taken over the demands and the importance afforded to them in the first
occupation is consistent with a symbiotic strategy for social change in which collective
bargaining with the authorities, in the hope of realising an outcome agreeable to both
parties, plays a central role. The shift away from a focus on demands reflects the shift from
a primarily symbiotic conception of occupation towards one which encompasses ruptural
and interstitial visions. As the occupation progressed it became clear that management
were unlikely to meet any of the demands and were in any case not negotiating in good
faith, since they were prepared to go back on verbal agreements when it suited them.
A response on the UCL occupation blog, to the first meeting with management, notes that
We are highly disappointed that many of our demands were received with evasion and
dismissal by an unrepresentative and unaccountable elite who lacked the legitimacy to
speak for the whole university on this issue (Our Response to Management, 2010).
The anger and frustration increasingly felt towards management was part of a growing
disenchantment with authority amongst student activists more generally, reflecting a
broader process of radicalisation. Cass Sunstein (2009) has shown how groups of people in
deliberative enclaves (shared spaces, on or offline), with some degree of commonality
and shared political commitments, will tend towards polarisation. As individuals reinforce
one anothers opinions, identities harden, and opposition to existing social practices
becomes more extreme and deeply entrenched (extremism, he acknowledges, can be a
good thing in certain circumstances). Without doubt, this process of polarisation took
place within the occupations. It is also the case that participation in direct action is, for

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G. Aitchison

many people, an empowering and transformative experience. Participants discover their

own agency when they confront, negate and ignore the power structures that dominate
day-to-day life. At UCL, many activists report entering occupation with a broadly social
democratic set of political commitments and leaving with a far more radical anti-capitalist
politics. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that the ruptural vision of
occupation assumed greater significance.
One way in which the antagonistic stance associated with ruptural visions surfaced was
in debates over disruption. In all three UCL occupations, and the Anti-Cuts Space,
tensions arose over the issue of the disturbance caused to university staff and students.
These tensions reflect political disagreements over the importance attributed to the
occupation as a symbolic protest and as an antagonistic form of direct action designed to
interrupt the functioning of the university. During the first occupation, there were a
number of heated meetings, over whether student societies should be allowed to make use
of the occupied space when they needed it for band rehearsals and so on. The third
occupation succeeded in shutting down an entire wing of the university, made up of
several offices where dozens of administrative staff worked, for four days. Several
activists raised objections to this, on the basis that it would disrupt various welfare
functions of the university. For others, this was precisely the point since the occupation
was originally conceived as a way to amplify the effects of the strike called by the
University and College Union (UCU, the lecturers union); students, unable to withdraw
their labour in solidarity with striking workers, were making use of the most effective
tactic at their disposal.
This rationale, it should be noted, is consistent with symbiotic visions of change, which
do not disavow the role of struggle. But it was noticeable that a far more confrontational
tone accompanied this occupation following the logic of ruptural visions. The BBCs
somewhat patronising observations concerning the non-antagonistic atmosphere of the
first occupationtheyre quoting Harry Potter rather than Che Gueveraalmost
certainly would not have been made of the third occupation (BBC News, 2010).
On Thursday 24 March, the second day of the UCU strike, activists simultaneously
occupied the registry and blockaded the room in which the university council were
scheduled to hold a meeting agreeing the tripling of tuition fees, resulting in the police
being called. In turn, management responded to this escalation by threatening to pursue 13
named individuals for the legal costs for securing a possession order and injunction
through the courts. The spectre of crippling financial costs for these 13 individuals, along
with the potential end to their university careers, prompted an immediate campaign to
Defend the UCL 13, along with a rally in the quad, and in the end management were
pressured into far less draconian internal disciplinary measures.
Along with the rising importance of antagonism, it is possible to trace the growing
significance of the ruptural conception from the beginning of the first occupation in the
increasing emphasis placed on the use of the space as a site to plan and co-ordinate direct
actions and protests, linking up with groups such as UK Uncut, which targets businesses
alleged to have avoided tax with sit-ins and protests. The occupations also acted as a
space to document and co-ordinate responses to police violence and use of kettling
against demonstrators. A group of IT undergraduates and a freelance software engineer
who had met in the first occupation went on to develop Sukey, an anti-kettling text
service and smart phone application designed to help protesters out-manoeuvre police by
providing up-to-date crowd-sourced information on police movements. The use of the

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occupations as a space to contest and challenge the state apparatus reflects the ruptural
vision at work.

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Interstitial Visions of Occupation

Whilst the function of an occupation, understood according to a symbiotic or ruptural
strategic logic, was apparent to most participants from the beginning (albeit not articulated
in these terms), the third function only began to be recognised as a distinctive form of
political activity in and of itself as the occupation progressed. Nevertheless, from day one,
the occupants of the JBR began to act in a manner consistent with a vision of political
change premised on working outside existing structures so as to re-configure social
relationships along more just and egalitarian lines.
From its inception, the occupation aspired to non-coercive, anti-authoritarian forms of
organisation. Internal practices inherited from the alter-globalisation movement, which
had in turn adapted them from the Zapatistas and other social justice movements from the
global south, were disseminated by student activists who had learnt them from, amongst
other places, the Climate Camp protests. According to these practices, decisions are taken
in a decentralised, non-hierarchical form of consensus democracy. Alongside consensus,
the use of loose working groups dealing with particular areas of practical concern, such
as media, kitchen, security, legal, tech and outreach, reinforced the principles of autonomy
and decentralisation.
This understanding of UCL occupation as a microtopia was perhaps best expressed by
a final year undergraduate, Sarah, on the UCL blog:
the UCL Occupation was a unique experience for all involved. Its not just a good
story but also a lesson for society. School kids should have the power to speak to or
turn down journalists. Everyone, no matter their opinions or status should have a say.
Being productive and educated should be something you do voluntarily and enjoy.
Politics and ambitious ideologies should be normal topics of conversation. You
should be able to argue with, trust, listen to and love everyone you meet. (The beauty
of occupation, 2010)
As with the other conceptions of the role and function of an occupation, this one was not
without controversy. Whilst some activists no doubt took a purely instrumental view
that consensus was a good way to make decisions and foster community in a small
group, others were opposed to it entirely. At one point, several activists involved in
Marxist Leninist parties proposed a move to decision-making by votea move that was
rejected by the group. Needless to say, the ideal of a free and open space with a democratic
egalitarian ethos was imperfectly realised in practice. Inequalities of gender, class and
education reasserted themselves in the occupation, as with the tendency of more assertive
middle class male activists to dominate discussion at meetings. Nevertheless, the antiauthoritarian aspirations of the occupation became an important part of the groups
ideological self-understanding. The second way in which the occupation can be said to
have followed an interstitial strategic logic is in hosting open educational talks and
workshops. Initially, these were, again, almost certainly conceived primarily, if not
exclusively, in instrumental terms as a way of providing stimulation and learning and
encouraging people into the occupation. Yet, as with the practice of consensus, they came

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G. Aitchison

to be seen along increasingly pre-figurative lines, as a concrete realisation of the more

democratic forms of education activists would like to see, and a rejection of the hedonistic
and utilitarian conception of the neoliberal student pushed by New Labour and the
government coalition (Hatherley, 2011). There were talks from lecturers, trade unionists,
activists, journalists and students themselves, as well as gigs, poetry readings and dramatic
performances. In what seemed like a natural progression, many of those involved in the
first UCL occupation later became involved with the Really Free School, a nomadic
institution based out of various squatted buildings in central London that self-consciously
situated itself within an anarchist tradition of creating autonomous and non-hierarchical
educational establishments as part of a wider emancipatory project (http://reallyfr
eeschool.org/?page_id 2).
Judging by other accounts, the UCL occupation was far from unique in using the space
in this way. Indeed, as Salter and Kay write in their profile on the occupation of the
University of the West of England (UWE), this was a bone of contention as the
occupation went on at UWE, with process-focused activists prioritising its use as an
education camp, with others more interested in protest. On the UCL blog, Casserly
(2010) wrote, it is a common mistake of some anarchists to see the occupation of a space,
a squat or a social centre as an end in itself rather than a tactic in a far wider struggle.
Here, we see an expression of the traditional Marxist critique of interstitial strategies, that
they involve retreat from political struggle to spaces allowed by capitalism and the state.
This critique is convincing when it comes to certain exclusively interstitial visions
criticised by many anarchists as lifestylismsuch as the hippy communes of the 1960s.
However, if we adopt the more holistic understanding of an occupation as simultaneously
a pre-figurative enactment of a groups political ideals, and as an organising space for
protest, the dichotomy of process and protest does not hold. The procedural forms of
democratic practice inside the occupation cannot be divorced from its substantive
political goals outside, but must instead be understood as an additional and complimentary
pathway to social change. Occupation as both protest and process involves a simultaneous
de-legitimation of the neoliberal capitalist order, which prescribes the commodification of
education and its restriction to a wealthy elite, and the legitimation of another world
governed by alternative logics.
Conclusion
It is common for activists involved in social movements to become fixated on one
strategy for political change, disparaging others as ineffective or even counterproductive. In occupations, which, by their nature, bring together activists from diverse
backgrounds, each with their own particular ideas concerning how their actions will
effect change, the co-existence of such strategies will often translate to tensions and
conflicts over day-to-day issues. The re-imagination of an occupied space as an
autonomous community will, at times, conflict with its use as a revolutionary organising
space or as a tool with which to exert leverage in negotiating for reforms from
management. Such tensions are frequently healthy and productive. In any case, they are
almost certainly inevitable when activists reject a reductive, 1D account of the purpose
of occupation. Successful social movements are those that combine a number of
alternative strategies for political change, which is why inclusivity and pluralism are so
important. The same can be said of occupations.

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References
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Hancox, D. (Ed.) (2011) Fight back! A Reader on the Winter of Protest, openDemocracy, p. 110. Available at
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Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2001) Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
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the-beauty-of-occupation/

Guy Aitchison is a second year PhD student in political theory at the School of Public
Policy, University College London. His research looks at how the content, scope and
distribution of rights should be collectively decided, with particular emphasis on the role
of social movements. He has been involved in political campaigning for a number of years
and has played an active role in the UCL occupations and the wider anti-cuts movement.